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First big dose of reality after installing computer.

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

First big dose of reality after installing computer.

Old 07-19-19, 02:14 PM
  #51  
rubiksoval
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Try to absolutely minimize the amount of time you're coasting or soft-pedaling (especially downhill) That was like an overnight +.5-1 mph for me way back when I was just figuring out that type of stuff (the power meter was an eye opener in that regard).
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Old 07-19-19, 11:14 PM
  #52  
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Originally Posted by TimothyH
It sounds like average speed and a cycling computer are the least of your problems.


-Tim-
Lmao!!! Yeah no doubt!

I’ll say, at least today I did get the chain tossing problem figured out. Ended up being my fault. Lol
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Old 07-19-19, 11:16 PM
  #53  
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Originally Posted by rubiksoval
Try to absolutely minimize the amount of time you're coasting or soft-pedaling (especially downhill) That was like an overnight +.5-1 mph for me way back when I was just figuring out that type of stuff (the power meter was an eye opener in that regard).
I feel like a power meter would be a really cool investment. It seems like it would really put things into perspective.
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Old 07-20-19, 03:03 AM
  #54  
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25-27mph??? 30mph??? 91 cadence???

My legs just blew up!

I solo 16.5-17.5mph for 1.5-2hr rides, low elevation gains in a valley along a river so lots of wind, i can push 21-22mph for a few miles in intervals but not the whole time
and cadence only around 80... any more i feel like the road runner in a cartoon

I ride a pretty popular trail and have only been outpaced twice this year, and flying by everyone else like their bike is broken

Need to learn how to ride in my sleep to train more, or maybe im still to fat to put up these numbers
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Old 07-20-19, 03:42 AM
  #55  
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Originally Posted by runnergoneridin
but don't have cadence numbers on that ...

With all this, what can I do to get more speed ? Cheers!

1) If you've got a watch and can count, you've got cadence numbers.

2) Intervals, hill repeats ... and if you want to do long races just be sure you can cover the distance.
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Old 07-20-19, 07:20 AM
  #56  
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Originally Posted by runnergoneridin
I feel like a power meter would be a really cool investment. It seems like it would really put things into perspective.
A power meter would be about 20X what he paid for the bike. He just figure out how to keep the chain on the chain rings.
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Old 07-20-19, 11:31 AM
  #57  
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Originally Posted by JohnJ80
A power meter would be about 20X what he paid for the bike. He just figure out how to keep the chain on the chain rings.
You’re telling the OP what not to tell the OP
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Old 07-20-19, 05:19 PM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by Darth Lefty
You’re telling the OP what not to tell the OP
No, what I'm saying is that he could get a much better bike than he has for the cost of that power meter. One that might not have drive train issues. You have to be able to reliably pedal the bike in order to generate power.
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Old 07-20-19, 06:32 PM
  #59  
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Originally Posted by runnergoneridin
I think I need to reset the meter while moving rather than from a dismounted stand-still. This I need to look into. The new riding shorts seemed to help with saddle comfort. I was indeed sliding forward into the saddle, which tells me my positioning still isn't right. Hoping for better luck next time lol. Plus, I'll start targeting longer distances.
If you’re talking about starting a ride while already up to speed, that doesn’t make you faster. You are essentially data doping. It’s like people who own Garmins and have it set to auto pause at 5 or 7 mph and end up with an average speed over 20 mph, but in reality couldn’t keep up with others who did 19.5 mph (real average) on the same ride.

You can always tell the people you regularly ride with who use Garmins because their average speeds are inflated on Strava.
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Old 07-20-19, 07:37 PM
  #60  
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I dont have a bike computer or speedometer or odometer on my bike. If I average 14mph or 18mph, what does it matter? Enjoy the ride. Better health and conditioning is going to happen no matter what, as long as you're turning the cranks. I love it when I can ride fast and crank hard for a good distance and feel good at the end of a ride. But thats maybe 10% of my rides. The other 90% I'm tired, just not getting in the groove, weather sucks, whatever. I don't need data to show me how I feel or how good a ride I had. Ride the bike. Enjoy it.
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Old 07-20-19, 08:01 PM
  #61  
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Originally Posted by big chainring
I dont have a bike computer or speedometer or odometer on my bike. If I average 14mph or 18mph, what does it matter? Enjoy the ride. Better health and conditioning is going to happen no matter what, as long as you're turning the cranks. I love it when I can ride fast and crank hard for a good distance and feel good at the end of a ride. But thats maybe 10% of my rides. The other 90% I'm tired, just not getting in the groove, weather sucks, whatever. I don't need data to show me how I feel or how good a ride I had. Ride the bike. Enjoy it.
I know that this is going to sound crazy, but different people can enjoy the same activity in different ways. Some of those ways may even involve data. See - I told you it was going to sound crazy.
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Old 07-20-19, 08:30 PM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by WhyFi
I know that this is going to sound crazy, but different people can enjoy the same activity in different ways. Some of those ways may even involve data. See - I told you it was going to sound crazy.

Some of us like data so much we choose to work in that field!
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Old 07-21-19, 01:20 AM
  #63  
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A phone on the handlebar, the Urban Biker app and a bt HR strap can provide a lot of data for not a lot of money.
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Old 07-21-19, 09:35 AM
  #64  
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Cadence is funny in that it's hard to get a precise feel for it, even counting and timing it, until you have a cadence sensor. But when you do have the sensor, after maybe even just a week of that you've got it and don't need the cadence any more! So it's overkill to look for something that specifically monitors your cadence.

For what it's worth, there is no difference in the computers between cadence and speed except for a setting, so you'd think you could take the cheapest $8 Bell computer and adapt it - and you'd be right! You cannot set them to show "108 mph" for 108 cadence - the setting doesn't exist - but you CAN set it to show "10.8 kph" for 108 cadence. A number is a number, that's good enough for a week or two. I worked out the magic setting for this.

Just set the computer to use metric, set the magic number 1667 for the wheel, put the magnet on the crank arm and that's it. You have cadence.
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Old 07-21-19, 09:59 AM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by runnergoneridin
I think I need to reset the meter while moving rather than from a dismounted stand-still.
You can game your numbers but, ultimately, you can't game your fitness. Don't go to any abnormal measures - just use a consistent, repeatable method so as to set your baseline for improvement.
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Old 07-21-19, 12:59 PM
  #66  
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Originally Posted by jadocs
If you’re talking about starting a ride while already up to speed, that doesn’t make you faster. You are essentially data doping. It’s like people who own Garmins and have it set to auto pause at 5 or 7 mph and end up with an average speed over 20 mph, but in reality couldn’t keep up with others who did 19.5 mph (real average) on the same ride.

You can always tell the people you regularly ride with who use Garmins because their average speeds are inflated on Strava.
That's not how it works at all. Strava ignores any auto-pause setting other than on or off. It will default any uploaded file with auto-pause on to pause only at 0mph, and its threshold is very, very small. Any forward movement is registered as moving time, and can easily tack 3-4 minutes onto the course of an urban ride.

If you see people with a higher average speed, they've likely manually input their wheel diameter in as larger than it actually is, or routinely change wheels/tires, which makes speed readings (and therefore distance) fluctuate. Pre-speed sensor, my Garmin 520 would routinely read about 0.2mph low. I had to manually distance correct every activity on Strava. Without a speed sensor, you can't spoof your speed by using auto-pause. You have to rely on GPS errors/inaccuracy. Maybe ride under a lot of trees.
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Old 07-21-19, 01:18 PM
  #67  
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I dunno. Training Peaks shows distance/total time; Strava shows distance/time in motion. So average speed on Strava is always higher. Thursday evening's ride included standing around waiting for a buddy to fix a flat and so Strava's average speed was 3mph faster. But neither figure is particularly useful.
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Old 07-21-19, 01:22 PM
  #68  
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So TrainingPeaks ignores auto-pause altogether. Strava goes by whatever you have set on your device. The average moving speed is the same for both uploads.

A recreational ride without auto-pause makes no sense. If I ride 2 hours to have lunch with my wife, am off the bike for an hour and a half, and ride 2 hours home, I should just say that my average moving speed was 11mph? Because it absolutely wasn't. That average-over-time has nothing to do with my effort.
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Old 07-21-19, 03:52 PM
  #69  
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Originally Posted by DrIsotope
That's not how it works at all. Strava ignores any auto-pause setting other than on or off. It will default any uploaded file with auto-pause on to pause only at 0mph, and its threshold is very, very small. Any forward movement is registered as moving time, and can easily tack 3-4 minutes onto the course of an urban ride.

If you see people with a higher average speed, they've likely manually input their wheel diameter in as larger than it actually is, or routinely change wheels/tires, which makes speed readings (and therefore distance) fluctuate. Pre-speed sensor, my Garmin 520 would routinely read about 0.2mph low. I had to manually distance correct every activity on Strava. Without a speed sensor, you can't spoof your speed by using auto-pause. You have to rely on GPS errors/inaccuracy. Maybe ride under a lot of trees.
I don’t believe Strava ignores data that is uploaded to it. If that were the case everyone on the same ride would have the same average.

The auto pause feature at a determined speed is designed to give the rider a better idea of their rolling average, which can be much different than their actual average due to stops (stop signs, traffic lights) and traffic. You can see this phenomenon when you view analysis on Strava. The speed graph will show what your slowest speed is. If it’s set to freeze at 3-9 mph, everything below that number is not factored for overall average. It can make a big difference when everyone else using a Wahoo or Garmin (on zero threshold) pauses exactly one second after you hit 0 mph.
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Old 07-21-19, 04:38 PM
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Again, absolutely no. Strava runs everything through their own algorithms. They ignore recorded data all the time, and replace it with their own. Let's just look at a couple of my recent uploads, with the moving time from Wahoo, followed by the moving time used by Strava.

Wahoo
40.19 miles, 1h58m09s
Strava
40.18 miles, 1h58m23s

Wahoo
25.16 miles, 1h43m31s
Strava
25.15 miles, 1h44m00s

Wahoo
73.01 miles, 4h11m56s
Strava
73.00 miles, 4h15m05s

Every single time I put a foot down, Strava tacks on a few seconds. I've had them add 7 minutes in 3 hours.
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Old 07-21-19, 04:52 PM
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I've never routinely compared my Wahoo to Strava differences that deep. I have noticed my Strava seems a little short and elevation more on average. On the slow movement mentioned... I take a slow ferry across a river on occasion, both the Elemnt screen (even with a speed sensor) and Strava at the end after upload shows 1.4 mph during that ride. Elemnt must fall back to GPS speed when the paired speed sensor is sleeping. I guess I could manually pause the ride for the ferry trip but it doesn't mean that much to me. Rides I use that ferry are usually more than 90 miles so it's not much impact on the numbers for that 12 minute ferry ride.

Last edited by u235; 07-21-19 at 08:31 PM.
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Old 07-21-19, 06:05 PM
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Not the Elemnt, but Strava. If the GPS is reading any speed from any source, Strava counts it as moving time. I've walked my bike through my wife's office, about a minute walk, during which the Bolt screen says AUTO-PAUSED and the speed reads 0mph, but Strava happily tacks on that 60 seconds. Because even if you have your sensor priority for speed set to the wheel speed sensor, the GPS is still active. Strava goes with the GPS, even though it tends to be less accurate.

Trust me, if I could cheat out more meaningless speed via GPS trickery, I just might. It 100% won't affect segment times, which are purely measured time between two GPS points. Which is also why you can get a faster time at a lower speed-- sometimes GPS latency is in your favor, sometimes it isn't. In my case, almost always isn't. I have one leaderboard segment where my average recorded speed is about 5mph faster than my top speed. I'll take it. I've lost more than my fair share of podiums to other folks GPS anomalies.
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Old 07-21-19, 08:49 PM
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Gotcha. Just compared some of mine

Elemnt 5:38.04 85.3 miles
Strava 5:36.08 83.1 miles

Elemnt 2:44.57 42.2
Strava 2.45.22 41.6

Mine are hit or miss.
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Old 07-21-19, 09:11 PM
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Literally the only way for me to get a shorter time on Strava vs. the Bolt is to not stop, at all, even once. Because it takes a couple of seconds to go from "pause," to "end" to clicking "yes" after Are You Sure? Strava will clip off those last few seconds, because there's no movement after. So I have a handful of rides 2-3 seconds shorter on Strava.

I'm just thankful Strava isn't clipping random mileage off of the ends of my rides.
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Old 07-22-19, 11:39 AM
  #75  
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Fred DeLong reports that a beginning cyclist has to breathe twice as hard as an experienced one to maintain the same pace through traffic. Pedalling well involves balancing your leg mass vs the crank geometry, timing the muscles for optimum rates of contraction without knee damage (slow) or control errors (high.) Body position matters, too. It only looks simple.
I have a handy little card under my speedo that shows the RPM in each gear for a range of speeds. It's very easy to work out with a calculator.
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